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Oren Kessler Profile picture
Oren Kessler
@OrenKessler
Author, “Palestine 1936,” winner of the Sami Rohr Prize and a WSJ best book of the year. 2026-'27 Goldman Visiting Prof., @Georgetown. Fellow, @RoyalHistSoc.
May 18 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
I noted earlier that Inea Bushnaq, the New York woman in Mamdani's Nakba Day video, is from a Bosniak family (Bushnaq = بشناق = Bosniak) that settled in Ottoman Palestine in the 1880s – the same time the first modern wave of Jewish settlers arrived.

But the plot thickens... As Nuseir Yassin, founder of Nas Daily who grew up in the Galilee village of Arraba, wrote:

"Elders in my Arab village in Israel told me the richest Palestinians sold their land and left first. 80 years later, their grandkids now claim to be displaced victims..." Image
May 18 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Today's ahistorical insanity comes from @LRB:

Upon visiting Beersheba in 1948, "Ben-Gurion... admired the fine stone buildings, the Arab houses... He liked them so much so he decided to live there. After his death in 1973 he was buried at Sde Boker..."

lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/may/… I've been reading and writing about this place a long time.

Never have I heard the allegation that Kibbutz Sde Boker, built on a desolate plot in the southern Negev and some *50 km* south of Beersheba, is essentially just an abandoned Arab home in Beersheba's old city.
May 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Mamdani's tweet is propaganda, not history. It's hard to know where to begin.

Perhaps by noting (again) that the "Visit Palestine" poster so beloved of Mamdani's Dismantle-Israel crowd was created by Franz Kraus, an Austrian-Jewish refugee from Hitler, in 1936. Here In Tel Aviv. Image More about Franz Kraus:

Born 1910 in Graz, Austria; died 1998 in Tel Aviv.

Arrived in Mandate Palestine from Berlin in 1934, a year after Hitler's rise.

His brother Otto was killed by Nazis

(actual Nazis, not your local Hillel chapter)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kra…
Jan 19 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
I'm excited to share my first piece with @TheFP: On the invented history depicted in the Oscar-shortlisted film "Palestine 36" (which, as it happens, has nothing to do with my book "Palestine 1936") Image "Directed by Annemarie Jacir, with major funding from the British Film Institute, BBC Film, Qatar’s Doha Film Institute, and the Turkish state-run media TRT, Palestine 36 defies—and at times invents—the historical record to rewrite the past in service of a contemporary agenda..."
Oct 24, 2024 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Among the long list of Middle East injustices that no one knows or cares about because they don’t involve Israel:

Over the last decade Egypt has destroyed – completely, entirely, house by house – the Egyptian side of Rafah Image Egyptian Rafah at left, Palestinian Rafah at right Image
Sep 21, 2024 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
I’ve read the NY Review of Books for many years, but this is journalistic malpractice:

“Seventy-six years ago, Zionist militias drove more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.”

1948 was vastly more complex than this nonsense sentence. Image The word “tendentious” doesn’t quite cut it:

“Between 1947 and 1949 armed Zionist militias roamed through Palestine, ethnically cleansing the inhabitants of more than five hundred villages, massacring many, and forcing out an estimated 750,000”

nybooks.com/online/2023/03…
Sep 19, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Japan firm says it stopped making walkie-talkies used in blasts across Lebanon yesterday bbc.com/news/articles/… “The IC-V82 is a handheld radio that was produced and exported, including to the Middle East, from 2004 to October 2014. It was discontinued about 10 years ago, and since then, it has not been shipped from our company,” the Japanese firm, Icom, said in a statement.
Aug 13, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The first “two-state solution” was proposed by the British on July 7, 1937.

Lebanese president Eddé met in Paris that day with Chaim Weizmann, head of the Zionist movement, and raised a toast: “I have the honor of congratulating the first president of the future Jewish state!” Image “Lebanon’s President Émile Eddé, a Christian, feared Muslim domination of his statelet and hoped a Jewish ally to its south would help safeguard its sovereignty…he met Weizmann and asked that the new [Jewish] state’s first treaty of ‘bon voisinage’ be with its northern neighbor” Image
Jul 31, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
More little-known information on Haniyeh:

“Hamas leader’s three sisters live secretly in Israel as full citizens… Some of their offspring have even served in the Israeli army”
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews… Haniyeh’s three sisters moved 30 years ago to Tel Sheva, a Bedouin town in the Negev...

“The Telegraph tracked down the Haniyeh sisters, Kholidia, Laila and Sabah… That they live in Israel is a closely guarded secret and nowhere is it guarded more secretly than Tel Sheva…”
Jul 31, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Oddly, almost all media accounts of Haniyeh’s life omit his many years working in Israel.

Maybe because it defies the notion (largely aspirational, I think) that more contact between Palestinians and Israelis would bring peace (Sinwar’s life was saved by Israeli surgeons) No mention of Haniyeh’s time in Israel in this Reuters obit, for example reuters.com/world/middle-e…
Apr 15, 2024 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
WSJ: Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and UAE, provided intelligence on Iran attack wsj.com/world/middle-e… “Arab countries quietly passed along intelligence about Tehran’s attack plans, opened their airspace to warplanes, shared radar tracking information or, in some cases, supplied their own forces to help, officials said.”
Mar 11, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just a book on a display table at Barnes & Noble, published by Stanford, with this on the back cover:

“Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, Hamas is a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the Palestinian people.” Image “Demonized in media and policy debates, various accusations and critical assumptions have been used to justify extreme military action against Hamas. The reality of Hamas is, of course, far more complex.”
Feb 24, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
From ⁦@JakeWSimons⁩’ new book “Israelophobia” a.co/8bb1SpJ
Image Image
Dec 30, 2023 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Freed hostage Mia Schem: ‘I experienced hell.’

Schem says she was held by a family that played mind games, withheld food, taunted her; man who operated on her arm — a veterinarian — told her ‘You’re not going home alive’ timesofisrael.com/freed-hostage-… “Her family said she has since developed epilepsy, from the trauma and the lack of sleep during her eight weeks as a hostage in Gaza.”
Dec 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
WSJ editorial blasts the retrograde Islamists of CAIR who are, far too often, welcomed openly as spokesmen for American Muslims Image Longtime CAIR chief Nihad Awad:

“And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.” Image
Dec 5, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
December 5, 2023: The day American academia died.

Dec 5, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
This is Bernie Sanders’ ex-national press secretary.

Note the ease with which she throws around “Zionists” as an apparently damning accusation that she seems to believe speaks for itself.

Then note the dismissiveness of testimonies of rape.

This is progressivism in 2023. “Because he’s a Zionist.”

This is insane.
Oct 17, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I tweeted this at 8:30am EST — 3:30pm Israel time — on Saturday, when so much was still unclear. The confirmed death toll at the time was 40 people.

We now know this was 8 hours into the onslaught, and that by this time the vast majority of the 1,300 killed were already dead. An hour later, once I had begun to put the pieces together and comprehend some idea of what was happening, I messaged my family this: Image
Feb 6, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The first photo of the unconquerable Salman Rushdie since his stabbing in August: In the new issue of the @NewYorker newyorker.com/magazine/2023/… @NewYorker He lost 40 pounds since the attack, but his expression is as determined, and good-natured, as ever.

Of his attacker: “I don’t know what I think of him… All I’ve seen is his idiotic interview in the New York Post. Which only an idiot would do.” news.yahoo.com/salman-rushdie…
Feb 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
USGS info for the second Turkey earthquake predicts “100-1,000 fatalities” based on magnitude, population locations etc. earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ev… earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ev…
Feb 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Death toll leaps to at least *1,300* in Turkey, Syria after 7.8-magnitude earthquake washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/… “The quake could be the largest recorded in the region”